


The Last Flight of the Cant

by Alefwithhat



Category: The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23634217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alefwithhat/pseuds/Alefwithhat
Summary: This is an alternate POV from Shed Garvey of events in Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey.  It covers the events of chapters 3 and 5.  It starts as the crew aboard the Knight explore the Scopuli.  They then have to head back to the Canterbury when a mysterious ship appears out of nowhere and attacks.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	The Last Flight of the Cant

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first-ever fanfic. I know it's a little rough. Constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated!

Naomi used the compressed nitrogen thrusters to pilot the salvage mech towards the wreck of the Scopuli. The big ragged hole in the side looked like a gaping mortal wound in the hull of the ship. The suit radio in Shed’s helmet hissed to life as the muffled voice of Holden said, “Naomi, can you make us a bigger hole? And be careful. If anything looks wrong, back us off.”

What a weird thing to say about an abandoned ship in the middle of space with a giant hole in the side. That, by itself, looked wrong enough, didn’t it? If it weren’t blaring it’s emergency beacon in the hopes of being found in this distant part of the system, it would never have been found.

Of course, only the Canterbury was unlucky enough to be close enough to respond. Not that Shed was against responding to emergency beacons. Being trapped in a dead ship was a shit position to be in. The only hope of life was being rescued by a passing ship. Space was a dangerous place.

Still, this was a weird place for a ship to be at all. A dead ship with a giant fucking hole in the side blaring a distress beacon was usually pirate bait. Every human with a heart would want to help save a fellow human a slow death of starvation or asphyxiation while trapped in a floating metal box, and pirates used that compassion shared by most humans to prey on the kind-hearted and decent people of the system.

But pirates usually laid out bait where it would be found. They’d leave some vessel they’d just raided floating along the trade routes and wait within sensor range for another vessel to come by and help. But this ship was millions of clicks away from any trade routes. Only ice haulers used this route between the rings of Saturn and Ceres and their only cargo was ice. Plus, the giant sensors on the Cant had shown no ships in a million kilometers. This was just a weird situation.

Shed held on to the salvage mech as Naomi drifted closer to the hole in the side of the Scopuli. The mech gently bumped against the hull and subtly shifted as the magnets on two of its four legs secured the mech to the hull.

Holden and Amos climbed down the mech and activated their magnetic boots just before stepping on the hull. Holden kept his eyes on the hole in the side of the ship while Amos shouldered his big gun as if he expected something to crawl out of it.

Shed found Amos very intimidating. Not only was the man big, but he seemed off. He seemed to lack empathy and had an unhealthy taste for violence, in Shed’s opinion. Shed had patched up enough people who had picked fights with Amos to be wary of the big man.

Plus, Amos reminded Shed way too much of the thugs he used to buy drugs from back in the day on Luna. Shed had been a pharmacist back then. He’d worked with dealers looking to score some prescription drugs from his pharmacy and he also worked as a dealer on the side. He’d seen men like Amos beat the shit out of people who owed money to the suppliers.

Then, one dark day, he returned to find that his apartment had been broken into. His little lab in his bathroom was destroyed and his stash of chems and drugs, worth a mountain of credits, was gone. Shed had left Luna for Eros that day. He’d paid a forger to help him fake medical credentials and got a job flying with the Pur & Kleen water company.

Now, he was here, looking at a thug like the men who were probably out there looking to kill him. Still, it was nice that Amos was at least here to protect him. Not many people bothered to fuck with Amos, and those who did regretted it. Shed had a strange feeling that Amos had a body count somewhere in his mysterious past.  
Shed’s thoughts were interrupted by a bright light in his peripheral vision. Naomi had fired up the welding torch on the mech. The torch glowed hotter and hotter until the flame was white. Then the arm reached down and touched the hull. It began slicing, leaving a glowing orange trail behind it.

After she’d finished slicing, Naomi grabbed the chuck she’d sliced with the magnetic foot of the fourth leg and held it in place. The mech blasted heat-absorbing fire suppressant foam on the glowing orange edges of the chunk. The mech vibrated as the chunk was torn free.

Holden and Amos walked along the hull and crawled into the enlarged hole. They disappeared from view. If they were talking, they were using their suit-to-suit frequencies instead of the general suit frequency.

Shed always hated this part. He was stuck outside with whoever was piloting the mech and was supposed to wait unless there were survivors. What was he supposed to do if there weren’t? Wait around awkwardly in silence while the others checked the ship? Make awkward conversation with the mech pilot? Unfortunately, he was the only one on board with medical “training” (mostly from vids on the net), so his participation in rescue missions was mandatory. Fortunately, Naomi was usually the pilot on them, and their conversations were getting less awkward.

He switched the radio to her suit frequency and said, “So, any theories on what this ship is doing here?”

“Not really,” she responded, “It’s weird. What’s a ship like that doing here? It’s a light Martian freighter from Eros. Why is it on the ice hauling lanes?”

“That’s the question,” Shed said with a sigh, “Did it fly here, drift here, or was it hauled here? I don’t like the idea of that last one.”

“Neither do I,” said Naomi, “but why would anybody do that? This is a lightly traveled route. We were the only ship in at least a million kilometers of this ship. Any pirates would have to be very patient waiting for anyone to stumble across this ship. And where are they?”

“Maybe they got bored waiting and wandered off,” joked Shed with a small grin.

Naomi’s chuckle was good to hear. In such a strange situation, everyone was a little on edge. Laughing a little helped relieve some of that tension. Shed couldn’t wait to get back to the Knight and pop a relaxant stick before strapping into his crash couch on the shuttle.

“Either way,” came Naomi’s voice, “it’s weird place for it to end up. The gravity of this asteroid is tiny. The odds of this ship or any ship flying dead through space hitting this tiny rock are astronomical. And one that was blown open by breaching charges? Those charges would have vented a good bit of the ship into space. If the internal doors are sealed, there might be survivors, but this ship was definitely attacked. I don’t favor the odds of the crew having survived.”

“Yeah,” sighed Shed, “it’s pretty damn weird. I don’t think her original crew left her here. I think someone else did. But I don’t want to think about that shit right now. I want to get back to the Knight and fly like hell back to the Cant. This is one mystery I’m happy enough to leave alone.”

“I know how you feel, but…” started Naomi.

She was suddenly interrupted by Holden’s slightly muffled voice coming over the general suit frequency. “Okay, boys and girls, we’ve found something weird, and we’re out of here. Everyone back to the Knight, and be very careful when you-”

The signal cut out. Shed gave a swift hit to his helmet to try to get the damn signal back. Then he realized that he could still hear Holden breathing. He was probably getting a message from Amos on his personal suit frequency.

“Talk to me,” said Holden. His voice was serious.

“What kind of weird?” came Holden’s voice again.

After a few seconds that seemed like half-an-hour, Holden said, “Where did that come from?”

Shed listened to Holden breathe for about a minute. He was concerned about what “that” was, but Holden sounded like he was in the middle of a serious conversation and Shed didn’t want to distract him.

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Holden. Shed realized he was talking to Captain McDowell. That made things worse. When he thought the conversation was between Holden and Amos, he thought “that” was something inside the ship. However, if he was talking to McDowell, “that” was outside the ship. “That” could be a pirate ship. Shed went cold with dread. The Cant was unarmed, aside from a few small arms carried by the crew.

Holden continued, “The Scopuli is totally unarmed. The hole in her side came from breaching charges, not torpedo fire, so I don’t think they even fought back. It might be where the Scopuli vented, but…”

Holden was quiet a few seconds more before saying, “Yes, sir. We’ll be back asap.”

Holden then addressed the crew, “Alright, everybody. McDowell spotted a possible bogey in the area. Amos and I are coming out. Naomi, prepare to fly as fast as you can to the Knight. Alex, prepare to fly us the hell out of here!”

Alex’s Texas drawl came over the radio, “Roger that, boss. The Knight’s all ready to go and get us the hell out of Dodge!”

Holden and Amos emerged a minute later. Amos had his gun slung by the strap to his shoulder and he was carrying a long cylindrical tube that was likely the Scopuli’s computer core. They practically leapt from the ship to the mech. As soon as they had hooked their tethers to the metal cage surround the pilot cockpit, Naomi released the magnetic feet and used a strong continuous jet to push the mech quickly away from the wreck of the Scopuli.

The mech decelerated as it entered the open cargo compartment of the Knight. Naomi didn’t bother going through the whole usual docking sequence. She just turned on the magnetic feet and clamped the mech to the floor. Everyone unhooked their tethers and floated toward the hatch that lead to the Knight’s command bridge.

Alex was at the pilot’s seat in his vac suit. Holden said over the radio, “Everyone strap in! We need to go!”

Nobody bothered to even take off their vac suits. Shed strapped himself in and wished more than ever for a relaxant stick. The tension had risen considerably. His panicked breathing echoed in his helmet. 

Holden’s voice crackled over his radio once more. “Is everyone strapped in?”

Shed added his affirmative to Naomi’s and Amos’s.

“Alex, get us the hell out of here!”

“Yes, sir, XO!”

The Knight suddenly lurched forward as Shed felt his body going quickly from weightless to crushingly heavy. Having been born and bred on Luna, he was much more comfortable around Belters and their low-g environment. Going from Luna’s 1/6 g to Ceres’s 1/3 g hadn’t been so bad, but he hated fast acceleration in ships. At 2 g, his body weighed six times what it did on Ceres and twelve times what it had for most of his life on Luna.

He was jealous of Amos and Holden. Shed bet Earthers were great at handling g-forces, considering that they were born and raised in a gravity well. They only felt twice as heavy as normal. Belters, too, like Naomi, could handle high g’s surprisingly well. Alex, as a pilot, was experienced with them as well.

Shed had only experienced high g’s a few times. His life as a pharmacist/drug dealer on Luna was fairly stationary. He’d travelled to different part of Luna City, but never left the lunar surface until he’d had to. The ferry he’d taken had been low-g. Flying on the Canterbury was the first time he’d experienced high-g acceleration.  
He suddenly realized that Holden had been speaking. As he cleared his mind to listen, his comm suddenly exploded with voices.

“Goddamn! We’ve got to crank up the g’s and go on the juice, boss! We can get there a lot faster…” Alex said. Shed hated the juice. Getting injected by a cocktail of drugs to keep him from blacking out or dying during truly high-g acceleration was horrible. It felt like all your synapses were firing at once and you had to be awake to feel your chest cavity starting to collapse. Not to mention that you felt like shit the whole time and coming down from it was an absolute bitch.

Naomi interrupted, “We might be able to use the Knight’s comms to send out enough static and junk data to screw up their torp’s guidance systems…”  
Holy fuck! thought Shed. Torpedoes? He turned his heavy head enough to look at the display from the ladar screen. He saw three ships- the Knight, the Cant, and one unidentified- and six fast moving dots. Shed had heard right- the pirates had fired torpedoes.

Naomi’s technical mumbo-jumbo was cut short by a burst of profanities from Amos. Shed was silent with terror. He had no idea what to offer to the conversation, so he stayed silent. He was useless in a fight and, assuming the pirates were defeated or let the crew live, he’d have to spend countless months patching people up while mourning the passing of others.

This was all such a common pirate tactic. Put out a derelict vessel with it’s emergency beacon activated and wait for some decent fucking people to show up to try to help. Then charge them with a barrage of torpedoes armed with warheads that delivered powerful electro-magnetic pulses that fried the poor bastards’ electronics. When the ship was disabled, board the ship, steal everything of value, and sometimes don’t kill everyone. Shed had assumed that working an ice-hauler was a safe-enough job. Ice-haulers didn’t tend to travel much along the trade-routes, where pirates normally hunted. Plus, they hauled ice and not really anything more valuable than that.

“Everyone, shut up!” shouted Holden, making Shed jump, or at least as much as he could jump with strapped to a crash couch at two g’s.

“Alex, plot us the fastest course to the Cant that won’t kill us. Let me know when you have it. Naomi, set up a three-way channel with Becca, you, and me. We’ll help however we can. Amos, keep cussing but turn your mic off.”

After a few seconds of silence, Naomi’s voice came over the comm. “Link is up,” she said.

Naomi and Holden were discussing strategies as Shed tongued a painkiller from this helmet was grateful for his suit’s catheter. He’d never survived a pirate attack before, and was not ready for this. The Cant might stand a chance. They had smart people like Naomi onboard who could do smart things to mess up the pirates’ tech and scramble the torpedoes’ systems. If that failed, Amos wasn’t the only scary thug with a gun onboard.

The Cant seemed to attract all sorts of unsavory people. Many people on board proudly sported the broken circle tattoo of the OPA- the Outer Planets Alliance. The OPA was a weird mix of politically-savvy leaders, who tried to negotiate with the United Nations on Earth and the Martian Congressional Republic for fairer treatment of the Belters who mined the asteroids, and large groups of terrorists and thugs, who just hated Earthers and Martians. Shed had always considered himself lucky that, even though he was an Earth citizen, he grew up in low g and looked more like a Belter than an Earther.

In addition to the thugs adorned by OPA tats, and thugs like Amos, there were lots of other shady people on the Cant. Pur & Kleen didn’t seem to care too much who they hired. Frankly, Shed was surprised when he got a job with them after only one quick interview and even more surprised when nobody seemed to have a problem with the Cant’s med tech openly dealing drugs.

Either way, he was confident he would be spending a long time patching people up. Between the OPA thugs with their questionably legal weapons and the brains like Naomi working to scramble the torpedoes, the pirates were in deeper shit than they knew.

Then Naomi said something that cut through his self-reflection and made him go pale and cold, “Using the Knight to try and draw those missiles?”  
Oh, fuck! Please no! Shed thought. Missiles designed to cripple a ship like the Cant would obliterate a little shuttle like the Knight! He wanted so bad to be back on the Cant, where at least he knew he would survive being hit by the torpedoes! The Knight was a fucking teakettle!

A few minutes later, Holden’s voice came over the comms and cut through Shed’s panic, “Let’s get there. Maybe we can get some people off the ship after it’s hit. Help out with damage control,” Shed relaxed since Holden had apparently dismissed Naomi’s dumbass idea.

Holden said, “Alex, got that plot figured out?”

“Roger than, XO. Bleeding-g burn-and-flip laid in. Angled approach course so our torch won’t burn a hold in the Cant. Time to rock and roll?” Alex’s cheerful Texan drawl was actually more calming that Shed had expected. Alex was at least acting like he wasn’t shaken, and that helped Shed calm down a bit.

“Yeah. Everyone strap in for high g,” Holden said.

Shed adjusted his crash couch and checked his straps. He shouldn’t have taken that painkiller. That would be just one more chemical in his body mixing with the juice. Shed pushed the button on his couch to activate the juice.

The needles shot into his back and Shed’s body went crazy. A rush of heat went over his body as he became unbearably awake and alert. He could see, hear, and smell every little detail and could his heart pumping harder and his muscles tightening as various parts of his nervous system went hot and cold.

Alex began the countdown as Shed mentally prepared himself. He hated high-g, but they were going to save his friends. Maybe they could rescue enough people and send out a distress beacon. Maybe they wouldn’t lose as many people as Shed feared-

His whole body felt like the whole crew of the Knight had decided to sit on him. The g-forces felt like they were trying to crush him into a liquid. The Knight was racing to the rescue as fast as it could without killing its occupants. It was agonizing, but Shed would deal with it because it was necessary.

Or so he thought. After a few minutes of being hundreds of kilos heavy, Holden told Alex to cut the thrust. “New job. We’re calling for help and negotiating a release of prisoners once the bad guys have the Cant. Burn back to that asteroid, since it’s the closest we can get to cover.”

Suddenly, Shed’s sore body weighed nothing. He was pulled by the foam of his crash couch and the straps holding him securely to the foam as the Knight’s thrusters spun the shuttle. Then he weighed hundreds of kilos again as the Knight’s fusion torch kicked in once more. He felt sick, though the anti-nausea meds in the juice kept his stomach acid where it was.

His bloodshot eyes watched the little dot of the Knight on the ladar display run away as the six little dots marking the torpedoes all disappear into the big dot of the Cant. Poor bastards! thought Shed. I’m suddenly the lucky one since I get to be the one safe from pir-

His thoughts were cut short by confusion. The big dot marking the Cant winked out as a bright light poured in through the porthole window. What was going on? Did the EMP blasts mess up the Knight’s ladar? Had they fried some component of the Knight? From that range, it seemed unlikely.

Alex powered down the fusion torch and cut acceleration to two g’s. Shed didn’t even realize that all of Holden’s urgent conversations had stopped until Holden’s voice, shaking from the juice and the stress of the situation, shouted, “Report, Alex, report! What happened?”

Alex’s cheerfulness was gone. His Texas drawl was low and flat. He sounded dazed as he said, “My God. They nuked her. They nuked the Cant.”

Holden was shouting something else, but Shed didn’t pay attention to it. Despite the powerful drugs flowing through his veins, he’d gone numb. His mind was completely vacant as Alex’s words hit him. All of his friends were dead? The Cant was gone?

His last thought was, I guess Paj will never get that prosthetic he was hoping for.


End file.
